The Creator

by Aj Estelliam

  ‘He’s started all this again?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Oops,’ I said, looking over at Jess who was frowning.

  ‘Sorry-I can’t tell you more details but this I can promise you,’ I said, looking directly at them both. ‘I will find your son’s killer, and I will make sure he spends the rest of his life behind bars. He won’t run free for much longer. Somehow I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ they both replied, with heart-felt feeling.

  ‘Before we finish here, can we speak with Jimmy a bit longer?’ Alison asked.

  I smiled at her kindly. ‘Of course,’ I nodded. I turned to Jimmy to start.

  Chapter 17

  It was another hour later when we finally left and as soon as Jess and I were on our own, I turned to apologise.

  ‘I’m sorry I was inappropriate, Jess.’

  She gave me a look. ‘I understand,’ she murmured quietly. ‘You did a good thing there, Alex.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes. You have given them their child back. It was wonderful to watch actually.’

  ‘Oh…I thought you were going to tell me off,’ I said, smiling softly.

  ‘No; but we do have to get moving. Simon’s mother should be here by now. We should go and speak with her.’

  I nodded. ‘What about Billy?’

  ‘I know,’ she grimaced. ‘I have teams out searching any abandoned places around the local area but they’ve found nothing so far…’

  ‘And I’ve heard nothing either yet,’ I said frowning.

  ‘So, my thinking is that we see Simon’s mother and see if she has any more information. If not, we then go all out to get Billy back.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Let’s get this done.’

  Mrs Wilson had been shown to the office where she waited in her wheelchair.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Wilson. My name is Officer Jess Love,’ Jess said as we went in to introduce ourselves.

  ‘Hello. I’m Ava Wilson,’ she nodded.

  ‘My name is Alex Hope. I work with the police.’

  She nodded towards me. ‘So, you think you’ve found Simon?’ she asked, her voice wavering.

  To me she looked like quite a fierce woman, even though she was restrained by her wheelchair. Her face was severe, but as I listened to her internal monologue, I realised that was due to the years of suffering she had endured after losing her youngest son.

  ‘We’ve positively identified him from dental records,’ Jess told her kindly. ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘It’s definitely him?’ she asked, looking Jess dead in the eyes.

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘And where was he found?’

  ‘In a shallow grave in the forest near where the scout hut was. It looks like the crime didn’t happen far from where he disappeared.’

  ‘Then why has he never been found before today?’ she questioned. ‘They searched and searched those woods!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jess said, shaking her head. ‘He should have been found, but I suppose somehow he wasn’t…’

  ‘It’s a disgrace,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘This could have been resolved years ago. As it is, I have a dead husband and a distant son. My husband died searching for his son and my other son is just lost because of how it affected our family.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jess consoled. ‘Would you like to see his remains?’

  She stared at him. ‘Yes, I would, Officer. Twenty years too late, mind…’

  Jess took the wheelchair from behind and began pushing it down towards the lift. We then took Mrs Wilson down into the morgue where Simon had been lain as Jimmy had, out on the viewing table.

  As Mrs Wilson was wheeled up to the table, she was not tall enough from her seated position to see. Jess helped her with her request to stand and I quickly moved to her other side to support her arm.

  As soon as I touched her, I understood. The feelings flooded through me rapidly and I realised why she had become the embittered, old woman who we met today.

  She gazed down upon her son, with sadness filling every vein.

  ‘What did they do to him?’ she asked quietly, looking at the bones which were left.

  ‘Simon was murdered,’ Jess said slowly.

  ‘How?’

  ‘We believe he was struck with an axe which delivered the blow which killed him,’ Jess revealed.

  Horror filled her senses and her breathing became laboured.

  ‘He was cut into parts and buried in a shallow grave in the forest. I’m so sorry, Mrs Wilson.’

  She wept quietly, her frail body shaking as we held her. I couldn’t help myself yet again and began to speak.

  ‘Ava, it wasn’t your fault,’ I said in the quiet room.

  She looked at me suddenly; her owlish eyes swooping to me.

  ‘Ava; I’m the one who found your son. I have the gift of sight and I was led to the graves of Jimmy Winters and your son, Simon. I wanted to say to you-it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault,’ I repeated for effect.

  She initially wanted to argue with my ‘gift’ but in the end, she didn’t bother. ‘Of course, it was my fault,’ she said tearfully, sinking backwards. We lowered her frame into the chair so that she could rest. I bent beside her and met her eyes.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Ava. The argument was just that-an argument.’

  She gasped. ‘What do you know of it? I never told anyone…’

  ‘I know…I know because your mind tells me-and Simon too…’

  ‘Simon?’ she questioned.

  ‘Yes, of course. You don’t think he’s been with you all these years? You don’t think your faith worked? He’s been there all along, Ava. Walking alongside you and watching over you.’

  ‘I’ve felt his presence…’

  ‘I know, because he’s with you. He chose to stay with you throughout the whole of your ordeal. He doesn’t want you to feel guilty anymore. You’ve suffered enough and he knows that.’

  ‘I argued with him so fiercely that night…before he left for scouts.’

  ‘I know,’ I murmured. ‘But that didn’t cause him to die.’

  ‘It didn’t?’

  ‘No. He was tempted out of the scout hut by other teenage incentives. It was nothing to do with you, Ava. The argument was long forgotten when he made his way into the woods with the killer.’

  ‘It was?’

  ‘He wasn’t even thinking of it.’

  She cried. ‘I’ve blamed myself for years.’

  ‘I know you have, Ava, and you need to stop. Simon says he was to blame, if anyone. He followed the other boy. It was his poor choice which led to his untimely end.’

  She shook his head. ‘He shouldn’t blame himself…’

  ‘And he says the same about you.’

  She bowed her head. ‘I’ve been so foolish…’

  ‘No, you’ve been a typical grieving mother. You’ve suffered enough though, Simon thinks. He wants you to rest now.’

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘I just want to rest now…and be with my Simon and husband.’

  ‘You mustn’t give up,’ I told her.

  ‘I’m done trying to live…I can rest now and live out my final days in peace.’

  I watched her sit back against the wheelchair and knew it wouldn’t be long before she joined her son in the world beyond. Now that she knew he was at peace, she had no reason to keep fighting.

  ‘I’d like to go home now,’ she told me then.

  ‘Okay,’ I nodded, knowing that she intended to go home to die quietly.

  ‘Can you call my son to collect me?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I murmured.

  After giving us the number, we called her son to collect her. Once she was gone, we sat down in the office feeling melancholy.

  ‘She’s gone home to die, Jess.’

  ‘What?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Now he’s been found and she knows the truth about the argument being not her fault, she can rest�
�and die.’

  ‘How sad.’

  ‘In some ways, yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Why in some ways?’

  ‘Well, she’ll be reunited with Simon and her husband. That will make her happy.’

  ‘Yes…but what a sad end.’

  I nodded, but could see both sides. ‘Jess, I feel like we really need to focus on finding Billy now.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing. The trouble is, I don’t know where to start.’

  A knock at the door startled both of us.

  ‘Come in!’ Jess called.

  Officer Hemmings put her head around the door and looked at Jess. ‘Sorry to disturb you, JJ, but the District Commissioner is here and he’s demanding to talk to you about this case…’

  As the Officer spoke, I was distracted by a feather. It began to float nearby me and taunted me to follow. I gasped, but Jess didn’t notice as she was distracted by her responsibilities weighing her down.

  ‘Okay, thanks. Give me two minutes and then send him in please.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Officer Hemmings replied and then turned to leave.

  I looked at Jess and saw she was panicked.

  ‘Oh crap!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have to talk to the head honcho, and there are no answers for him yet!’

  ‘Yes, but we’re on it! And we have some answers! We just solved two cold cases from the nineties!’

  ‘I know, but that won’t be what he’s focused on. It’ll be stopping him in the here and now that concerns him.’

  ‘Jess, I hate to tell you this at this precise moment but I can see a feather again-you know what that means?’ I said, frowning.

  ‘Oh no…another body part?’

  ‘It’s here now…I need to follow it!’

  ‘Alex; I can’t take you right now! I have to meet with the boss man!’

  ‘Okay, okay…don’t panic-but I’m going. What if it disappears and I don’t see it again?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sighed. ‘Okay; let me quickly phone Vaughn. I’ll get him to take you and they can recover the part, whatever it is.’

  ‘Great,’ I nodded as Jess walked to the phone.

  ‘Hello? Vaughn?’

  I listened as she spoke to him and arranged for me to meet him and his team out the front of the building. We would follow my directions and collect the body part. He had agreed to her directions in the space of thirty seconds and I was out the door, the feather floating alongside me.

  ‘I’ll see you in a bit!’ I called as I hurried down the corridor. ‘Good luck with the meeting!’

  She gave me a sardonic look. ‘Thanks!’

  I grinned at her before turning and hurrying off down the corridor. I took the stairs two at a time and was hurrying out of the front of the police station in the space of a minute.

  Vaughn and his team were waiting for me already out the front.

  ‘Hello,’ I greeted them.

  ‘Hope, right?’ Vaughn asked.

  ‘Alex Hope, that’s right.’

  ‘Okay…JJ says you’re directing us to another recovery.’

  ‘That’s right. Shall we go?’ I asked, aware that the feather was fluttering away.

  ‘Yes, of course. Come on…let’s go,’ he said.

  We made our way across the police car park and to their van which was black and had ‘forensics’ emblazoned across it. Vaughn climbed into the driving seat and the male assistant held out his hand and spoke.

  ‘You go ahead in the front.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ I nodded, trying to remember what his name was.

  I climbed in as the male and female assistant began to get in the back. Once in the car, and the doors were slammed shut, a wave of sickness shuddered through me so intense that I put my hand to my mouth for a minute. The nausea was sudden and overwhelming and in those few, short seconds, I realised my mistake. My head turned as if in slow motion, and I met the killer’s eyes. They gleamed with an evil which I wondered why I had never previously noticed. I swallowed against the bile which rose in my throat and a million thoughts ran through my head.

  ‘Drive,’ he instructed, from behind Vaughn’s seat, the gun rising into view.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Fraser,’ Vaughn warned.

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth. Your days of telling me what to do are over. Now drive, before I shoot the back of your head wide open.’ A muffled click sounded and a gurgling sound signalled to me that he had just taken out Vaughn’s female assistant.

  I stared at him, eyes wide as the van began to move. The feather floated around in the car around Assistant Fraser Williamburg.

  ‘Finally,’ he said to me, as I continued to stare at him. ‘You know it’s rare to get you alone…that stupid dyke of a girlfriend of yours trails everywhere with you.’

  I gaped at him, unable to speak.

  ‘So, if you’re psychic, how is it that you didn’t figure it out when you visited the morgue?’

  ‘I don’t know, Fraser,’ I said, using his name deliberately. ‘I don’t control what I see…’

  ‘You fucked up my plan,’ he said, looking furious.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured, worrying about what he had planned for me because of that fact.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry…I have a new idea. You’re not going to like it,’ he said, with an expression of disgust curling on his lips. ‘Now shut the fuck up and turn around,’ he said, lifting a second gun to the back of my head.

  I turned as directed and gulped against the sickness I felt. ‘Fuck,’ I said in my head. Why on earth had I taken the risk of going out in search of body parts without Jess?

  Chapter 18

  Fraser directed Vaughn to drive through snowy roads, which slowly became smaller and more rural. Despite them not following where I had been about to direct them, strangely enough, the feather was still there and it floated along in front of the car. It seemed we were going in the same direction that I would have taken them.

  Fraser himself stayed quite quiet in the back of the car; in voice anyway. Now I was in his presence, everything was beginning to become clear. I could hear his thoughts and I understood his motives.

  ‘Turn left,’ he demanded, as the feather floated off in that very direction.

  ‘You don’t need to do this,’ Vaughn repeated.

  ‘Shut up, Vaughn…you keep talking, you’ll die sooner. You’ve just about run out of usefulness anyway. You were only being used to get her here, so shut up and do as you’re asked. Isn’t that what you taught me?’

  ‘You resent me,’ Vaughn murmured.

  ‘Of course, I fucking resent you, dickhead! You ordered me around like some obedient puppy!’

  ‘I was teaching you.’

  ‘You didn’t teach me with enough respect!’ Fraser ranted.

  ‘I didn’t mean to disrespect you. It’s just my way.’

  ‘Well your way needs some adapting. You can’t push people around like that and expect no reaction. It just isn’t possible.’

  ‘No. I apologise,’ Vaughn replied.

  I was pleased he was apologising. Vaughn was an intelligent man and like me, realised that to get Fraser on side, he would need to show him respect and subordinate himself to him. It was what he wanted and the only way out of this.

  ‘Stop the car up here on the left…behind the building.’

  ‘Okay,’ Vaughn said, pulling over.

  We slowed to a halt by a building I didn’t recognise. It looked like an outbuilding on a farm, except that it was derelict and so far away from any of the local roads that it was almost impossible to find.

  ‘Right…’ Fraser said from the back of the van. ‘Put these on,’ he said, passing us both zip-lock wrist ties. ‘Behind your back and then I’ll fasten them,’ he told us.

  I did as he said and then leant forwards as he reached to pull the plastic tight against my wrists. I winced in pain but said nothing. He repeated the action with Vaughn.

  He then ordered us out of the van, com
ing out my side and holding the gun at my head as we walked around to huddle together. My mind began to veer as I heard Vaughn plan his escape. He was going to run; and I didn’t know what I could do to stop him. I knew Fraser could shoot him easily-he had two guns! But I didn’t know what I could do, to prevent him trying to get away.

  ‘This way,’ he nudged me, turning his head from Vaughn for a moment.

  I felt his actions before I saw it happen. Vaughn ran and sprinted for the trees off to the right. Fraser whirled, grabbing me with one arm and the gun coming upwards in the other.

  ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ he yelled angrily, bristling with frustration.

  ‘No! Don’t! You’ll make it so much worse for yourself!’ I told him.

  ‘Worse for myself?’ he said, reeling on me. ‘Can it really get much worse? Thanks to you, the crimes of my childhood have been exposed and now I’m destined to have to end all this before my other secrets come out! Don’t you know what you’ve done?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything, Fraser. It’s all been your work; your creation.’

  He glared at me and then looked off to the forest beyond where Vaughn had disappeared. ‘Ah fuck him! He’s not worth it anyway. Let’s go and end this.’

  I stared at him sideways as he half pulled, half dragged me into the building. I wasn’t going to go willingly, not when I knew that he planned that we would both be dead by the end of this afternoon.

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ I objected.

  ‘I’ll hurt you a lot more in time,’ he grunted, dragging me now.

  ‘I’m not your type, remember?’ I sneered at him.

  He shoved me to the floor with force and I landed in a heap. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I would never be one of your victims. I haven’t got the right anatomy.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he denied, even though his heart was racing and his mind spinning.

  I had got to him, and it had been easy. I decided to continue pressing at his buttons. I wanted this to come to an end too, and I knew that the way to do that was to piss him off. ‘You like cock,’ I said, rudely.

  He glared at me, looking stunned.

  ‘You’re gay! You like dick!’